Since Brazil has not historically subscribed to the concept of hypodescent (Obama, for example, would not be considered “black” as in the US but rather a “mulatto”), it becomes tricky determining where to draw the racial line. The University of Brasilia, a few years prior to this, was one of the early adopters of racial quotas for “blacks” in emulation of American affirmative action. In the United States, things are much more black and white: one drop of “black” blood makes one “black”, whereas a state of pristine and unspoilt virgin purity is apparently what qualifies one as “white”. The problem is, for a country with 500 years of profound miscegenation, it becomes rather difficult to define who is “white” and who is “black”. In 2010 the Lula government enshrined the Racial Equality Statute, in so doing giving the concept of race legal standing for the first time in Brazil’s 500-year history. So in the interests of progress, Brazilians need to get with the program. In the American classification scheme there are basically four categories to describe appearance: “white”, “black”, “brown” and, yes, “yellow”. Given that the progressive, culturally imperialistic worldview that the likes of Beverley Wang preach about considers the American historical experience to be normative, this just will not do. They came up with 134 descriptions of appearance. In 1976 the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics asked Brazilians to self-identify their appearance. Brazilians, for the most part, do not view things through an American lens.īut they are starting to. The lead singer of the most successful Samba school that parades in the Sambadrome during Rio’s famous Carnival is referred to by all and sundry as “Neguinho da Beija-Flor”, which translates in English to “Blackie of Beija-Flor”. Google the words “nega maluca” and pictures and recipes for chocolate cake appear. When Brazilians do an amateur performance dance to the song “Samba da Nega Maluca” (“Crazy Black Girl’s Samba”), they tend to like to do it in “blackface”. In a regular segment on the show, actors portrayed the Obamas, and while the actor portraying Obama himself was black, other actors would go full “blackface”, while the one portraying Michelle, curiously, only went part “blackface”. Indeed at the time I used to see on Brazilian TV a comedy show in which characters routinely appeared in what we now know to call “blackface”, but nobody knew to take offense. Her bemused reaction suggested that this was rather like suddenly being informed that donning a blonde wig may be deemed offensive. Again, the controversy stemmed from viewing things through an American lens and applying American racial sensitivities to contexts and experiences far removed from the American one.Īt the time of this brouhaha I happened to be living in Brazil and, following the controversy online, I turned to one of my housemates to inform her that there was currently some controversy in Australia simply over some white people painting their faces black. Not too long before this, Australians were introduced to the term “blackface”, a term relatively few Australians had been familiar with until then, when a harmless skit on the “Red Faces” segment of the Nine Network’s Hey, Hey It’s Saturday show became engulfed in controversy. Uh-oh! Red Symons has really put his foot in it, hasn’t he? Or has he? Maybe his behaviour while speaking with RN presenter Beverley Wang for an ABC podcast was his cheeky way of challenging Wang’s progressive, culturally imperialistic approach that seeks to view and interpret things to do with “race” exclusively through the particular lens of the American historical experience.Īustralians got a taste of how the world is seen when viewed exclusively and peremptorily through this American lens when a harmless KFC ad showing an Australian cricketing fan sharing a bucket of KFC chicken with West Indian cricket fans had to be yanked by KFC after Americans deemed it to be racist.
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